What you need

  • Sugar soap for cleaning, available in your local hardware shop
  • Sanding block, medium
  • Undercoat
  • Paintbrushes
  • Satinwood paint; I used Colourtrend’s “Pantry Blue” to paint the whole chair, Colourtend’s “Porceline Doll” to fill in the lettering and Colourtrend’s “Peacock Blue” for the outline of the letters.
  • Carbon paper/duplicate paper, available from office supplies shop
  • Pencil
  • Frogtape
  • Thin artist’s brush
  • Computer with printer

    • Method

  • 1 Clean down the kitchen chair with sugar soap, making sure you remove any grime build up that easily accumulates on a kitchen chair.

  • 2 Sand the chair with a medium sanding block in the direction of the grain. It can be difficult keeping with the grain on the spools, but just make sure you are sanding them.
  • 3 With undercoat, turn the chair upside down first and paint everything that you see. Then flip the chair over and paint everything else. Be careful when painting spools as they tend to build up paint at the edges. Leave to fully dry, preferably overnight.
  • 4 To paint, repeat the process with Colourtrend satinwood paint in “Pantry Blue” and leave to dry fully. Apply second coat. Leave to dry fully.
  • 5 To make your template, print out any wording that you like from your computer on to an A4 sheet of paper and tape your template on to the piece of furniture where you would like it positioned.

  • 6 Place the carbon paper under your template, with the darker side facing down and tape it in place.
  • 7 Trace over all the details on your template with a sharp pencil or pen. Peel back the template and the carbon paper.
  • 8 You should now be left with the outline of your template. Using Satinwood paint in “Porceline Doll”, fill in the lettering using a thin artist’s paint brush.

  • 9 To define the outline of the lettering, I used Colourtrend’s Satinwood paint in “Peacock Blue”, applied with a thin artist’s brush.

    • Next week

    Stencilling